zoetmb
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Musicians aren't losing out from streaming music, UK regulator says
Except that artists did make money in the physical model and in the download model, even though labels found ways to rip off artists back then as well.The streaming model doesn’t work for all but the A-list charting artists.I have a family member who is a singer-songwriter. One of her tracks has been streamed more than a million times. She hasn’t seen a penny yet.Typically, the streaming companies pay $0.0033 per steam. So a million streams would pay $3300 to the label. At even a 20% royalty, that’s $660 to the artist. But if the label spent money on marketing, that’s considered a royalty advance that has to earn out. So most artists will never see any money from recording.Let’s say that the million streams represents 250,000 people each listening 4x. In the 1950’s - 1980’s, that would have generated about $300K and on a 12% royalty, the artist would have gotten $36,000, which is about $284.000 (using 1970 as the base year) in todays dollars.The Beatles stopped touring in ‘66 and became a studio band until they broke up in 1970. That wouldn’t be possible today.The streaming model is great for consumers, but it sucks for the artists and it’s not even good for the labels. In the U.S., the entire industry, including the gross of the streaming companies, is 60% of its former peak, adjusted for inflation.
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Former employee admits defrauding Apple of $17 million
I don’t get how this happens in a large company like Apple. In all the large companies I worked for (and all smaller than Apple), there were many levels of approval needed both before acquisition of goods or services and to approve payment. Any goods we purchased required three quotes. Accounts Payable would not process an invoice for more than the purchase order price without written explanations and additional approvals.It wasn’t impossible to defraud, but not at these kinds of levels. There was a guy before me who did get caught taking kickbacks. I replaced him, but I was unaware of his fraud until I started cleaning out old paperwork and discovered we had been overcharged for certain equipment. Then they told me why he was fired.
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24 years after original iMac, there's still big demand for floppies
Back in the day, apps were efficient and wrote small files. Early word processor documents were only slightly larger than the number of characters in the document.Overhead in today’s files is enormous. I can’t believe anyone can accomplish anything today with a 140K floppy or 800K 3.5” drive.I’ve still got some Apple ][ software and OS discs. Many years ago, someone gave me an Apple ][c, but I couldn’t get the drive working.For all the taxes we pay and for the size of the military budget, it’s absurd that they still have such old equipment and software in use. I suppose the government is still running a lot of MS-DOS as well. -
Apple's features graveyard: Once heavily marketed, now gone
Everyone will miss different things that they found useful to them. I only "accept" the loss of the headphone jack because I can use a traditional headphone with a dongle (on the iPhone). I will not use Bluetooth earbuds, both because I don't want Bluetooth passing through my brain and because I refuse to buy any product in which the batteries can't be user replaced. Using a device in which the rechargeable batteries eventually die and can't be replaced is both a scam and bad for the environment. (Yes, I know it's the same in the Mac, but I have no choice there.)sflagel said:This is not a long list, and some of it is a bit daft. Not supporting headphone jack and Intel chips? Why not include: not supporting CD-ROM, 30-pin connector, VGA Port? I miss Front Row the most, and Automator.
And I actually still use CD-ROM. I run a site that contains much audio and it's useful for some of the contributors to ship CD's rather than dropbox the large files. Also, I have a record collection of over 2000 albums which I do not want to re-buy on Apple Music (or subscribe) and CD is a useful method of transferring them over.
But I completely understand people who have no use for those things. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
The fact remains though that when Apple chose to remove the DVD/CD drive from the Mac, it wasn't because of declining use of that technology at the time (and Apple never supported Blu-ray, which they should have). It was simply because Ive wanted to have a thinner case.
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Apple continuing full-court press against retail unionization efforts
It’s really quite simple: if Apple wants to keep the union out, rather than hype or threats, all they need to do is up the pay scale.Apple is known for paying their corporate, marketing, engineering and other such workers well, but their retail workers lousy.In expensive cities like NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Dallas and others, it’s impossible to live on less than $22 an hour, IMO. Minimum wage in NYC is now $15/hr and a company with Apple’s profits can afford to pay substantially more. Apple thinks nothing of spending $millions to redo a glass cube or staircase. They need to treat their employees well.If not, they’ll either face unionization or they’ll play the ugly game that Starbucks and some other chains are playing and close stores.
Unions are a mixed bag. There’s positives and negatives. I was personally in a union twice and that worked out pretty well. But in another more creative position, when there was talk of unionizing, I probably would have voted against it had it come to that.In general, if it’s a job where you have many people doing the same thing and one doesn’t have a way to stand out to get raises or be promoted, then a union can be helpful. But if one is far better than an average employee, then a union can hold you back because it’s far more likely that raises and promotions are based on schedules and seniority and not the quality of one’s work.
